A review by northeastbookworm
A Pleasure to Burn: Fahrenheit 451 Stories by Ray Bradbury

5.0

This is a collection of stories that use and develop the themes found in "Fahrenheit 451" and the "Martian Chronicles". In it you get a sense of Bradbury working and developing the ideas of his later best selling novels. What left me deeply shaken was his spot on reading of the the decline of American civilization and culture. Ideas written 50/60 years ago are now headlines. Finishing the book one is left with the question of what will happen to this country in the next 25 to 75 years. Given the decline in reading, the almost 1984ish mindset regarding war, & the level of greed I am not hopeful. The only problem with the book is the lack of annotation regarding the date and development of the stories. It would have been interesting to have Mr. Bradbury's comments and thoughts on these stories and about how they aided him in the development of the novel we know today.